


New Teeth

by femmefuckup



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: (but everyone is fine dw), Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Boris POV, Character Turned Into Vampire, Happy Ending, Kitsey POV, M/M, Myriam POV, Pippa POV, Repression, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use, Vampires, canon typical allusions to boris/kotku, canon-typical overdosing and brushes with death, cause shes a sexy bitch, every one gets a pov im gay, i have no idea how to tag things ive never posted fic before, its all of them - Freeform, kotku is a vampire, kotku pov, kotku tries to be a mom friend and only one person dies and he gets better, no beta we die like larry decker (without friends but ready to bullshit my way through anything), oh i have an outline now so i can say this:, or like happier than the actual canon ending, set after theo leaves vegas, standard theo decker levels of internalized homophobia (but not explicit), standard vampire creepyness, thats kinda the whole concept, theo pov (eventually), this is just a game called how many of my head cannons can i fit in one fic, this isn't actually a boreo fic its a love letter to kotku
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:09:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25085194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femmefuckup/pseuds/femmefuckup
Summary: “I’m a vampire”But he just laughs and sets the bottle down, gives her a flat look for just a second and then laughs some more.“And I’m a fucking fairy” his voice twists as he speaks but he’s grinning like maybe he gets the irony that sits right next to him and she waits a second and she laughs.orTheo leaves and Kotku tries her best to pick up the pieces or, at the very least, keep everyone alive.
Relationships: Boris Pavlikovsky & Kotku, Myriam/Astrid, Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky, can you believe no ones tagged anything that before???, only mentioned but someone need to make that a tag and i guess that falls to me
Comments: 11
Kudos: 18





	1. Shot in the Dark

“Good luck, I won't forget you”  
There's a pause as he puts his hand out, presumably to pat the little white dog on the head.  
“Bye, Popchyk. Look after him, will you?”  
And that’s the last thing he says for a while, but he breathes heavy, head against the hotel pillows, looking at the ceiling. Boris had always been fun until he wasn’t. Boris had always been down for anything until he was face down on the floor, just barely avoiding choking on his own vomit, and crying softly over that boy. Now it's worse than it used to be, but maybe soon it’ll be better? Things change all the time.  
Until then she sits next to him, more upright but otherwise in the same position, and lets him lean against her on his own terms. And she waits for him to speak.  
“All I said” his voice is hoarse, though that could be from the last three days, it may have nothing to do with Potter. “Kotku, Kotku” he pats at her absently “that's all I said”  
“You should sleep”  
he mumbles some sort of protest but she’s already walking across the room, stepping over a broken chair and an impressive amount of shattered glass (fucking rich kids) and hitting the light switch hard with her palm.  
In the dark Boris shifts around, and eventually, his breathing slows. When he passes out it's a slight comfort. Boris had the real caring instinct. Everything she did was a shot in the dark, it's nice when it works out.  


-

She needed to tell him. She had told him. It had been before Theo had fucked off. They had been chest to chest, he had undoubtedly been high but that wasn’t really something she could work around.  
“I’m a vampire” saying it had sounded silly then, it sounds silly to think it now.  
He had laughed into her mouth and then ran his tongue across her teeth. She didn’t bring it up again.  
But she needed to tell him, he was running himself into the ground, and the people around him were not going to pick him up. He needed the fear of God in him or something like that. He needed to know that he was a vulnerable kid in a big world of powerful people. He needed to know what to look for.  
The man behind the counter raised an eyebrow at her and she passed him her ID. it felt like a fake in her hands, it felt like a fake in her gut when he looked at it and then at her. The name and face and date of birth on the ID were all hers, but she hadn’t aged since about two months after the picture was taken. She looked a little different, sure, she had lost a couple of pounds and cut her hair, the guy who did it had even told her she had a bit of residual aging left in her, that she would one day look 20. But she was essentially the same, chunky orange stripes in brown hair dyed black, a bit bony especially by her neck, big eyes, one black ring in her left nostril and three along the cartilage of her right ear, skin that should have been darker then, at least now she had a reason not to tan. It felt like lying to say she was 18, her trips around the sun didn’t feel like they counted anymore. soon the truth would be an obvious lie. She bit her lip, the man behind the counter gave in and let her buy the cigs and diet coke.  
She needed to tell him.  


-

Boris looked like a drowned cat. He was scrawny, sopping wet, and his eyes were wild. There was no way to keep track of what he was on or which girl he was cheating on her with. If Kotku cared about either of those things she wouldn’t still be around, watching him plunge into some rich kids pool and crush pills he couldn’t name. From across the patio he looked at her, his face was loose in the way that said: “I’m not thinking about it, I’m not thinking about it, I’m not thinking about it”. It had been a bit over a week since Theo had fucked off. She needed to tell him. He disappeared into a crowd of kids who carried their high better than he did.  
Time swelled and then slumped and Kotku found herself on a couch in a dark room. People were walking slowly, swaying on their feet. The music barely broke through the haze and the boy on her chest was, if anything, an annoyance, but he was handsy, and probably an asshole and she was hungry. How would she do it? She’d take him upstairs, to a bedroom with an ensuite. She’d make sure he was stumbling as he walked. She’d pull him by the collar to the bathroom and he would be surprised by her strength and his overcompensating macho laugh would piss her off enough that she wouldn’t feel guilty. She would drink until he drooped against her arms. She would whisper in his ear “nothing happened, you fell asleep”. She would hope the memory thing worked this time, or that he was fucked up enough as is. She would dump him in the bed and wipe up the red drops on the floor because she was bad at this. she was so bad at this. She used to be worse though. She will be better. Things change all the time.  
“Hey, wanna go upstairs” her voice sounds like she’s on To Catch a Predator right before the big reveal.  
“Yea” his hand slips to her waist as they stand.  
She smells it before she hears the crash or sees the stain. She’s taut and turning her head before she can stop herself. Boris has fallen through a glass table. His arm is coated in blood, it probably looks worse than it is. He’s laughing, someone grabs his shoulder. There's a hunger that used to be in her stomach that has now made its way to her chest. She needs to get out of here.  
“Let’s go” she smiles at the boy as she tugs him upstairs.  
She needs to tell him.  


-

Boris is spread out, high as a kite, on the floor of her room. He’s in a t-shirt and boxers and he’s making a face, probably at her music, maybe at the cherry blossom scented candle. Whatever, it covers the smell well, and if he doesn’t like bullets that’s his problem.  
“Stop moving” he flinches at that but lets his leg fall still  
The pinky is hard to paint but she’s got practice. She closes the black carefully and twists off the cap of the pink with her teeth. It’s three small flicks of the wrist and she's done. He moves immediately.  
“Stay still!” she hits his knee to the beat of the song, tinny as it plays from her cheap plastic stereo. Maybe they can steal her a better one. Maybe he’d like that. Or maybe it’d remind him of Theo. God. When did she start caring this much about someone else's feelings? She’s losing her edge.  
“I'm thinking a glittery topcoat?” he nods and smiles.  
When he laughs, short and sharp, a puff out of his nose if anything, his blood surges ever so slightly. He’s so alive.  
Fuck.  


-

He’s crying. Really crying. Rocking with the sobs and speaking in fragments. He’s sitting on her floor. He says something about a bird. She knows this is about Theo but it’s hard to put this part into the puzzle, so she doesn’t. She gets the broad strokes. He's crippled by guilt about something. He misses the little sonuvabitch like Theo was the air he breathed. He’s convinced Theo will starve in New York without him. “The money is only for school” he explains like that means something. Sometimes he’s worried about the little white dog “he’s so small, and they’ve been so mean to him, and sometimes he's ok. He might be ok. But he’s better with me, I know how to talk to him. Kotku, he needs someone to watch out for him” eventually the dog stops being the dog, which is fine. He glares at her when she says “sorry about your boyfriend”. He falls fist first into her chest when she says it again. But that's different now too, it's not meant to scare her. He’s not trying to be a man. And it doesn’t hurt. It probably hurts him when she pushes him back and he lands on his curved spine. He winces, which well, sucks to suck. When he can only get a pronoun out between muffled wails she hands him the vodka that she’s kept decidedly out of his reach, pinned in between her too-bony knees.  
And when he lifts it and chugs she waits for a second and  
“I’m a vampire”  
But he just laughs and sets the bottle down, gives her a flat look for just a second and then laughs some more.  
“And I’m a fucking fairy” his voice twists as he speaks but he’s grinning like maybe he gets the irony that sits right next to him and she waits a second and she laughs.  
He passes her the bottle. She really needs to tell him.

-

He’s lost weight. He looks tired. But he brightens at any attention, he leans close to people and loves them like it is somehow both a habit and a gift. He leans over a coffee table with little fanfare now. He straightens up and still looks sickly. But he keeps moving, and she keeps watching the highs from across the room. He was talking to Amber a moment ago. She takes a second to pull out a pang of jealousy and hold it for a second. She lets herself get angry. She picks at her nails and glares. But it's hollow so she drops it. He still looks hungry. Maybe he should be eating more. God this shit is hard. She hasn’t needed to know how much food is enough for two years, and even then she didn’t do it right. She goes out for a smoke.  
There's a girl outside, and she smiles at her. The girl is tall, blonde, probably a friend of K.T. Bearman. She blushes under Kotku’s eyes. She probably has a lot of blood, says a voice that feels foreign in her head. She's playing with a clear pink lighter. Kotku takes out a cigarette, ignores her own lighter, and leans in, letting this other girl’s thumb struggle for a second at the wheel thingy while her hand is cupped close to her face. She hums a note of appreciation and settles against the wall.  
She takes a slow look at the girl’s neck. Tries to get a good look at her pupils, get a sense of how lucid she is. There’s a lot of stuff people will ignore if they don’t want to know about it. The girl is looking back at her. There's a flash of understanding and then a smile. She’d feel guilty, but she’s hungry and the cigarette is almost done. The girl nods at the door and starts walking. The decision made, Kotku follows.  


-

She’s been waiting for him to crash, really crash, do something he can’t handle and break his neck on a badly placed ottoman, for weeks now. She thinks about it happening in a backroom she didn’t think to follow him to, at school, at Amber's house, in K.T.’s dad’s suite. There is a logic to expecting it to be out of her line of sight, right when his mood sways and he stops having fun! fun! Fun! because some kid is sulking like Theo did, holding a blunt like Theo used to, someone mentions Harry Potter or New York City or birds (?) or offers to do acid in the wrong tone of voice and he’s running towards something that’ll numb him fast. Because he’s done so much already, there will be a reason when shit hits the fan. She’s ready for it. She’s watching him. She’s keeping track of his moods. Because he’s so alive even when he’s passed out drunk. He’s so alive and he’s so young and nothing bad can happen to him, because she’ll notice before it can.  


-

In reality, he’s in her bathroom and she's watching something black and white and in Russian because he likes it when she hears a thud. She's faster than she should be but he won't care, there are little green pills, oxycontin, strong end of life type shit, scattered mainly in the sink but also on the floor, there are two lines still untouched on the counter.  
Boris is crumpled. He’s folded in on himself like someone who has experience collapsing. He isn't bleeding. She could kiss him. But she can’t because his eyelids are swaying and his pupils are tiny and his lips are almost blue and he’s barely breathing and they're way out in the middle of the desert so even if she called an ambulance (where's her phone??) it would take ages and then who’s gonna pay for it? Maybe she still has Narcan in her purse? She should know that. But he’s there right next to her and he’s dying. She knows he’s dying like she knows which way is up. He’s at her feet and he’s dying.  
Fuck.  
She’s picking him up, quick because if she stops she won’t be able to go through with it. His neck feels weird against her mouth but she can’t think about what that means because she is trying so hard to remember how to inject venom instead of suck blood. There’s no muscle memory here to fall back on, and he’s in her arms.  
He screams.  
Of course, he screams. she remembers the pain but that memory can’t mimic how it felt then, any idea of a God, loving or otherwise, had been ripped from her. There is nothing more isolating than that pain. Boris doesn’t really believe in God, maybe it won’t be that bad for him. That's a shitty excuse and she knows it. At the time she had thought she was being punished, that it hurt because something in her was wrong. At the time she had assumed everything was punishment. Now she knows that this hurts because that's the default. There's no need for it to be pleasant, for it to weigh down the eyelids, for it to feel like fresh laundry wrapped around your organs. That feeling, as the blood slips away, stops them from fighting it. But this is only supposed to happen after they’ve already lost the fight. It feels like your blood is on fire and your bones hate you and your skin is melting off and yet too hard to be molded to you the way it is.  
He’s still screaming. She carries him to the couch, turns off the tv. He’s not screaming anymore. He’s not awake as far as she can tell but he’s shaking hard. Standing above him like this it’s like a mirror image of her turning. Instead of thinking about that she goes to get some water. He’ll want blood, but that's not in the house. He’ll be fine. He won't be dead. Or maybe he will, in a sense, but he won’t be gone. He’ll probably hate her, but he won’t be gone. And when he’s done hating her she’ll show him the ropes and he’ll be fine.  


-

The sun is setting and she’s still sitting on the floor, the lights are off and Boris is spread flat across the couch. His heart isn’t beating but that doesn’t mean anything. She’s not staring at him, or actually she’s staring at the flaking black polish on his toes. He’s gonna want to hunt, she’ll need to be there or he’ll kill someone. The cyclical nature of all of this sits in the corner where she ignores it.  
“Kotku” his voice is scratchy “what the fuck” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's 4:56 am, I've just barely proofread this, and its all incredibly self-indulgent (Kotku and Vampires!!) but nows as a good a time as any to lose my fic virginity I guess.
> 
> this is part of a much larger plotline (with unfortunately much less Kotku, though that could change) but I haven't decided if I'm gonna write it.


	2. Transformation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys grow up.

“Kotku” his voice is scratchy “what the fuck”  
She looked down at him, a little surprised. For a second he doubted himself, but no. He could feel the absence of blood in his veins, he could feel his heart not beat, he could feel his lungs not breathe.  
“I’m sorry, you were dying, I didn’t know what else to do” her voice didn’t sound right.  
“I did tell you, you just didn’t listen” she smiled a little when she spoke but dropped it fast. Kotku was scared of something. Her voice was too soft and he could see her hands shake. Concern cut through confusion for just a second. But then what she was implying hit hard.  
“You’re not making sense” he laughed a little, the air hurt in his throat.  
There was dread in the pit of his stomach, the first thing he had felt (instead of not-felt) since waking up. Maybe he knew where this was going, but she had to say it.  
“I’m a vampire” she stared at him like she was expecting something but Boris couldn’t look at the idea head-on. He imagined the wind picking up, getting faster, as he stood alone in the desert. That’s what it felt like, dry angry heat hitting him hard.  
“Borya, I’m a vampire and I bit you. You’re a vampire.”  
“No” looking at the day as a whole this didn’t make sense. He had woken up on Kotku’s floor, still drunk and thinking of Potter, it was a school day. He was playing hooky (ha). They were going to watch movies until they could find a party. He was going to try some of Larry’s pills, if they were good he would share with Kotku. He did try them and then. And then  
“You’re a vampire. Vampires are real and you are one” he squinted at her, her head blocked out the sun from the window so her flyaways, black and orange, looked like a halo. Maybe he had died. Maybe he was still sleeping. Maybe he would never get the bird back to Theo.  
“How…” he hadn’t figured out what he was going to ask when he started speaking, he never needed to, but the words did not supply themselves. She took the almost question and ran with it.  
“You can be mad at me. I get it, I was angry when I was turned” she winced “I didn’t want to do this, I just couldn’t let you die in my bathroom. I’m sorry Boris, I really am. I’m really very sorry” she looked at him for just a second and she might’ve been crying “it’s not that bad, really. Most of the stuff in movies is fake, and you’ve already done the whole transformation thing which is really the hardest part, I'll show you how everything works if you want me to. I’m really really sorry.”  
He was supposed to be mad at her, he was mad at her. The bitch could’ve let him die. She didn’t have to do this to him. There was an urge that pushed its way up him, he closed his eyes and could see himself pushing her to the ground. The anger would leave him and she’d be scared enough for the both of them. But he didn’t really want that, and he wasn’t sure he could move.  
“How old are you”  
“18”  
“No actually how old are you”  
“18, I was turned two years ago by a guy I was staying with, I was 16 then”  
She still sounded sorry. He remembered something he had said to Theo “Poor girl, very hard life.” Theo had laughed then, she was so hard, so strong, so angry. Kicking like she was going down in a fight, even if she wasn’t.  
“Ok” his voice was raspy, and she was still shaking, “Kotku, it’s ok”

-

Theo did not for a moment miss the irony of his loneliness. The night around him was leering, every eye felt like an intrusion and the space between each glance felt like an isolation with no end. He had done this to himself. There was no doubt about it. He did everything to himself. He could grapple with blame all he wanted, but he was the one at fault at the end of the day. He had run, afraid and without options, from a semblance of home, towards a place that now after years of his absence seemed not like his mother but like the empty shape she had left behind.  
He missed Boris.  
Of course, he missed Boris. That went without saying. Boris was never an afterthought, he wasn’t a thought at all. He was always there. And now he wasn’t. There wasn’t much that would be different if Boris had come along, just another body next to him, pulsing with obvious guilt just like he was. Someone to watch his back, keep the inevitable park bench warm, find the blind spot in the store, hold him close without even touching him.  
But if Boris had come along there would have been no one he could ask to take him in. No one who would accept the double intrusion of two dirty hungry boys with bags full of stolen things. At least Theo, on his own, had the memories of friends to lean on.  
He closed his eyes and indulged, for a brief moment, in an image of Boris staying with the Barbours. He shuttered against the wind.  
Fuck. He needed a drink.

-

“So here’s what we’re going to do” Boris was fidgety, running the bedspread back and forth between his fingers, pupils dilated more than they should be and actively avoiding her eye. He kinda looked like a virgin anxious before his first time, which was more accurate than she wanted it to be.  
“You will go downstairs, to the party” he cuts her off “and find a boy who is trashed, and bring him up here. I will drink his blood, carefully, and we will tell him that we had a wonderful threesome and that he passed out. Then he will pass out and then we will leave.”  
God this boy was going to be the death of her, she was smiling without thinking.  
“I got that right?” there was an almost genuine note of concern in his voice  
“Yeah yeah you got it right”

-

Hobie was tentative about everything. Trying not to push too hard or broach anything too difficult to talk about. Trying not to say what was painfully obvious to everyone involved. That Theo was intruding, he was forcing himself into a home that didn’t want him. And it was a soft coil of guilt that settled in him when he took it upon himself to stay until he was forced out.  
Most days he was quiet, he studied, he cleaned, he helped, and he tried not to look too hard or be too hard to look at. They had talked to George Bracegirdle. He had talked to Xandra. He was going to get into this school. He was going to turn 18. He was going to be fine. He was hoping Hobie would simply not speak on his presence until he was able to stop being a problem.  
Hobie was out of the house at the moment, which was privately a relief. He needed a moment before he could make himself small again.  
Boris had not called him back. This wasn’t exactly a surprise. Boris had a long life of fleeting friends. Of people as close as brothers who he left behind again and again. Boris would not be bothered by- wasn’t bothered by him leaving. Because it was Theo who had left, Theo who had no right to be upset. Theo in the dark empty house staying as still as possible so as not to shift the comfortable quiet.  
He went, quietly creeping more out of habit than necessity, to his bag tucked under the bed and found the baggie of pills. Quickly sorting by color and shape he found one he might’ve had before and sat down to go through the motions Boris had taught him.

-

The kid was passed out and pale on the bed next to him. This had in a matter of weeks become routine, the two of them hunting together. And if kotku never made him do it on his own he’d be grateful. The secrecy and guilt and camaraderie reminded him of shoplifting with Theo. It was nice.  
“You’re undercharging”  
“No, I’m not.” Boris licked his lips, there was nothing there.  
“Yeah, you fucking are. 70 a gram? Boris come on, they’re rich assholes. If you’re not overcharging you’re undercharging them, and betraying the proletariat” he laughed at that, hands raised up, eyes a little angry and a little tired. She had learned that word from him. She was mocking him, he couldn’t find it in him to be mad at her.  
“I’ll up the cost, for you”  
“For me? This shit is for-” she waved her hands around, a Boris-ism she couldn’t drop. “The MILF”  
“It’s a little bit for Xandra, a little bit for me and you, but mostly it’s for Bobo.” he cringed at the name, a pavlovian response to Theos tormentor, even if Mr. Silver was a nice man now.  
“Ok, sure. Whatever. I’m gonna go smoke and then we should leave. Wanna check his pockets?” she nodded at the Ginger in the jersey crumpled on the bed.  
“Will he remember?” he was still nervous about this part, the blood-sucking people of the night part, not the crime part.  
She touched his forehead. He was warm, feverish, and sweaty, but he didn’t shift under the weight of her hand. she wiped his sweat off on her MCR shirt.  
“Nah, plus he was kinda a dick. He deserves it.”  
Boris moved to pat down the boy. He grinned a little, like a fox.  
“We should tell her.” his smile dropped as he spoke.  
“Tell who what?”  
“We should tell Xandra about the whole” he gestured to his teeth, which had already shifted back to normal “vamp thing”  
“I think she knows.”  
He tilted his head, Kotku never told him things if she didn’t have to. Never wanted to upset him. Never wanted to push. She hadn’t even checked to see if they could go into churches or eat garlic or cross running water until after she had turned him (respectively: no, yes, and they hadn’t had the chance to check yet)  
“How” she avoided his eye for a second.  
“It’s pretty easy to notice once you know what to look for. She’s smart, you’re bad at hiding it, and her friends. The shitty ones. They were like us.”  
He glared a little at that, for not telling him, and shoved the boy’s wallet in his pocket before he marched to the door.

-

Kitsey was a nice girl. Or well. She was a girl who made sense. A girl who would fit into his world well. A girl who would make him happy. A girl who would make his people happy. A girl who, though he thought it odd to think of, had a sort of beautiful symmetry to her. He took refuge in her home as a boy, and now he took refuge in her family as a young man.  
Kitsey was a nice girl. She drank white wine and laughed like it was nothing. She was beautiful. She had her fingers pressed softly on the inside of his wrist and she spoke without stopping like she knew he didn’t want to answer questions. She smiled in a way that disclosed nothing. She dressed in a way that said first date like it was some classy event that you had to play golf well to understand. She charged ahead past awkwardness and the rush of voices around them and paused only to spin her fork in circles through her pasta.  
Kitsey was a nice girl, so he tried not to cringe away from her when she finally asked  
“So how was vegas? that’s where you went after you left, right?”  
“Uh yeah, it was ok. Can’t say I preferred it to New York and my dad was a mess and Xandra, his girlfriend I don’t know if you remember.” she gave a nod but did not make a face that would imply any memory of Xandra and her snakeskin aura “she was quite a woman to be raised by. I spent a lot of time with this boy Boris.”  
He pointedly did not pause to hold the name in his mouth a moment longer than necessary.  
“His dad was there to mine oil. We were really close until my dad died and I had to come back to the city. We haven’t really talked since.” he smiled at her, shrugged, and did not look out the window where the moon sat, staring at him.  
“Sounds nice” she was done spinning her pasta, and ready to dive back into her story about boating while in college.

-

Kotku was pressed close against him, in a leather jacket she thought made her look professional and with her hair up in a way that actually did. The meeting place was a bar whose owner was friendly with the people they were meeting. Not exactly neutral ground but Boris wasn’t in a position to argue. Not yet.  
“Tell me again why we have to work in Europe?” she was glaring at him, or really at the door to the bar, but the glaring was for him.  
“I have friends in Europe, people have money in Europe, people have things in Europe that they want us to bring back to the states. It makes sense.” and then, with a smile “you’re just mad that you only speak English.”  
“And Spanish. I speak Spanish. I have friends in Mexico. Plus It’s a shorter flight.”  
“I’ll teach you Russian one day, I promise. But it's better now if you don’t talk.” and with that, he pushed open the door.  
There was a fat man in a nice suit sitting in a chair, and two not fat men in slightly worse suits standing behind him, and a woman, leaning against the bar with her hair up in a way that made her look professional.  
There where quick words exchanged and drinks passed out and a brief explanation of the value of the painting. They were going to want to fact check that, which would be fine. The three men went to go talk, and also to presumably read Carel Fabritius’s Wikipedia page. The girl with her hair up stayed, and eyed the two of them slowly. She jerked her head at kotku and raised an eyebrow. Oh, she was gonna hate that.  
“This is Katherine. She only speaks English,” he said, in English, to stop an inevitable fight.  
The girl nodded, and extended her hand, first to Kotku “I’m Myriam.”  
Kotku’s entire body went rigid when she shook the other woman’s hand but smiled before it could be taken the wrong way.  
“Call me Kotku.” which meant something, but not something Boris could put a finger on.  
Then she extended her hand to Boris, and just for a second, she looked like a swaying cobra. He took her hand.  
Her very cold, very strong hand.  
At the edge of his vision, he could see Kotku giving him a look and mouthing "I like her". Right in front of him, he could see the cobra woman, Myriam, smile with a knowledge she had probably had since the moment they walked in and slowly lick her teeth as if to abandon all subtly.  
“It’s nice to meet the two of you, I feel we have a long future ahead of us” all brusk and to the point with an air of pragmatic competency that made Boris hope she was right.

-

A man was in the store. He smelled of money but he didn’t seem to know what he was looking for. This was going to be easy.  
Theo hung back, watching him idly as he picked up china sets and turned them over in his hand. Laughing easily before setting them down. Almost everything he picked up was genuine, but he didn’t hold on to anything. He was thin, the type who looked very young even though he obviously wasn’t. He was pale. Not naturally so. He was the type of pale that looked like the sun had been wrenched out of otherwise dark skin. His nails were painted, not black but almost, and his hair curled over his eyes. He reminded Theo of no one in particular. He had a sort of downtown wealth to him like he was the edgy fashion designer son to a multi-millionaire father. Which was good. This was all very good.  
Before Theo could even approach him he became fascinated with one of Hobie’s own, a side table made almost entirely from scraps.  
“This genuine?” he turned as he spoke. this was the first time Theo had the chance to see his eyes, they were pitch black.  
“Everything we have here is an original antique.” slipping into the voice was easy. So so easy.  
“Wonderful.”  
And then the man paid. Not even haggling at what would have been a bit of an absurd markup if it had been real, and smiled as he left. If his eyes lingered a bit on Theo’s hands or lips or neck, well, that was the other man’s problem.  
Night fell and Theo shut the lights and slipped out to smoke. It wasn’t a proud habit, but it also wasn’t his worst. He stood in the almost alleyway (the city didn’t really have those) for a couple of minutes before realizing he wasn’t alone.  
The man from earlier, he strained at his memory for a moment, Oliver- That had been the name on the receipt- was staring at him from behind the recycling.  
“Hello?” If the man wanted to jump him he would’ve picked a place a little farther away, where Hobie couldn’t hear him scream.  
“That was quite a commission you made there.”  
Well shit.  
“I’m a co-owner sir, I don’t make commissions” he was going to stay polite until that exit was no longer available to him.  
“Regardless, I think you owe me a little something.” the man was much closer than he had been a second ago, and his hand was on Theo’s neck, push his chin up and licking his lips.  
Fuck.  
As the man leaned in Theo twisted away from him and, in the second he was free, planted his fist into the other man's cold hard face.  
“Fucking presumptuous asshole”  
And then, because he hadn’t fought like this in years, he ran as the man behind him laughed from the shadows, but did not follow.

-

Boris had known he was gonna fuck it up from the get-go. People he didn’t know, friends of friends, holding his bird. Theo’s bird. Kotku wasn’t there, doing work abroad. He hadn’t hunted in far too long. He wasn’t thinking right. Wasn’t moving right. And it was so fucking hot.  
And it went all to shit, shady Wearhouse like from a movie. DEA and FBI. a whole chicken coup screaming in the distance. Gunshots. Someone dead. Someone bleeding. Everyone running. The bird was gone, probably halfway to Europe by the time his ears stopped ringing. He was gone too. In a hotel room somewhere that wasn’t Florida drinking those little bottles of vodka, Myriam watching him like he might break himself on the edge of the hotel mattress. She was texting someone, maybe Kotku, maybe Astrid, without looking away. The lights were off and his face was hot and the guilt that had slept for years was yet again gnawing on his ribs.  
“His bird” the words didn’t quite work “ Theo’s bird”  
“I know”  
“I’ve got to get him his bird back, keep it safe.” The little bottle hit the ground leaving an impressively tiny stain on the carpeting, which in turn reminded him of theo, stumbling drunk, giving away his secret to Boris. Trusting him with his heart.  
“I’m not sure how we’re gonna do that” she was using her mom voice on him, he hated it.  
“‘m gonna figure it out.” and then a little clearer “I need to see him” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> posting again in the early am, this is messy and still self-indulgent but what else is there to do?  
> I shoved Kotku into Boris's adult life because I love her and she deserves to be there.


	3. Blood of his heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys reunite. Secrets are told. Theo is a blackout drunk.

Maybe it had been the lighting in the bar? maybe it had been the panic soft and warm in is stomach but sharp in his chest? Maybe it was his brief memory being twisted as he sat waiting in the booth? or maybe it had just been too long? Not long enough?  
Whatever it was, Boris didn’t look different.  
His voice had changed, the same intonation around “potter!” but said with another layer of confidence that hadn’t been with him yet in vegas, and deeper too, no longer the sharp ups and downs of puberty.  
He also did look different. He was probably taller, Theo had grown a lot, it wasn’t Boris’s fault that he dwarfed him now. He wasn’t nearly as thin. He had the slightest hint of stubble. He wore a heavy cologne but not the kind boys wore to seem older. He dressed like an adult, which shouldn’t be of note. Except it was, Boris was still young. Boris was practically unchanged. Sure he had aged, but not enough. He didn’t look like it had been almost a decade since they had last seen each other. He looked, at best, like a 20 year old playing dress up for an interview.  
And then again he looked different in a way that wasn’t mimicking age, pointier, paler, eyes almost cat like, teeth sharp. He was threatening. He was assured. He was alluring in a way that made Theo feel at ease like there was no point in running. That feeling, that thought, was part of the change too. Boris looked dangerous, maybe he was.  
But it was Boris, Boris he had known then. There was no mimicking him, the way his hand hit Theo’s shoulder with an easy weight, the way he laughed like happiness was a given, the way he moved through life a bit like he was pulling one over on fate itself. It was Boris the man he had met in the desert, who had pulled him out of solitude and handed Theo’s self over to him again like it was nothing. He looked the same. He was the same. He was the same boy Theo had-  
He looked too young.  
It was- Boris was strange.  


-

“Potter” he was young, like a charming trickster in a fairy tale, about to swindle a town out of everything.  
“I was just about to leave.” that was a lie, a horrible lie, a lie Theo himself did not believe.  
“Sorry” he was so young “had something to do”  
Theo laughed at that. A short disbelieving laugh.  
“I did! It is not like I work in accounting office.” his hands were up in the air, a movement to say I am innocent and I am unarmed both of which were lies by virtue of Boris being Boris. But he was smiling. There was no way to be angry, even if the anger itself hadn’t been fake.  
“You’ve got new teeth” they were one of the few things about Boris that were different at all, whiter, straighter, sharper, almost like a shark. Strange.  
“Ah, yes well, my wife” he waved his hand, cringing first at Theo noticing and then at his own words before letting them trail off “dentist, Sweden, cost a fortune.” he trailed off.  
“You could’ve brought her” this immediately distracted him  
“Who? Astrid? No, she’s with the kids”  
“No, Myriam, your wife?” and then unable to brush it off “I’m sorry, Kids?”  
Boris was laughing like a garbage truck, big and heavy, scary if you hadn’t seen it coming. It made Theo freeze like he was cornered by something much larger than him.  
“Of course you could’ve had kids and a wife! there no reason-” bad start “you just didn’t seem the type.”  
He laughed again, softer now, trickling its way into nothing “Myriam’s not my wife, she’s my business partner, right-hand man, This is my wife” he passed over his phone.  
She was a thin, white blonde woman, in a snowsuit, pointedly not looking at the camera. She was laughing, but a little sad underneath that. Astrid. His wife. Theo forced his eyes away from her face and to the two little blond kids sat swaddled at her feet in matching snowsuits.  
“And these are?” Theo said with a casualness he had long since manufactured  
“My kids, yes, twins, had them when I was far too young.” this, at least made sense. Boris, far too young, as he still was, making reckless decisions with thin young women. “She wanted to keep them, what was I to do? There’s another one, not in the picture, I haven’t met him .” this too made more sense. though the children looked nothing like Boris who, pale as he now was, had hair too dark to produce little washed out blonde children.  
“They stay in Stockholm,” he waved his hand “for the skiing of course,”  
Boris then, as if he had not just declared many inexplicable things, turned to the waiter and made some order in polish Theo couldn’t follow.  


-

There where drinks, and toasts, and easy smiles and food of unclear origin and with each question: “you live where again?” “what is it you do?” “Wow, just wow, KT Bearman?” “I’m sorry, you stayed with Xandra?” Boris shrunk into himself more, a strange move that betrayed something that Theo couldn’t name.  
“Ah yes, well, me and Kotku had been fighting for a while about” he waved his hand “it does not matter, and I needed a place to stay, we were low on blow and suddenly, doors slammed in my face, no friends, scared, almost like I would hurt them.” he laughed, but it was hollow.  
“Xandra, I should thank her, more than kotku, almost more than you, she pointed me towards my good fortune. She needed money, for those friends of hers and for Mr. Silver, me and Kotku, we helped her out. Ended up with a job for Mr. Silver, and then a job for his friend, and then we are in Europe, our own business, meeting Myriam, all good things come from that woman.” he smiled at that and leaned in, under the cologne, he smelled almost metallic. Strange.  
“You’re still in touch with Kotku?” there was essentially no jealousy in his voice.  
“After you left” there was a sudden break of eye contact, that Theo hadn’t noticed he was enjoying “we got very close, special bond, like blood, can’t be broken.”  
This meant very little to Theo, of course. It meant nothing at all. He had no right to be upset. They hadn’t seen each other in years. And, it was not relevant but it still meant something here, Boris was married. So it meant nothing, whatever high school possessiveness that had overcome him back in the day had not survived the years apart. But still. Kotku. What a bitch.  
“And you? Working for the old Poofter? How is your life?”  
“I don’t work for him, we’re co-owners.” he avoided the word partners “actually, there’s something I want to show you.”  


-

Boris was nervous, it was hard to pick up on under the heavy layer of strangeness, but he was definitely nervous.  
“I do not want to fight you potter.” he hid his teeth as he spoke “it will not end well”  
“Boris I’m not going to fight you.” at this moment Gyuri, Boris’s driver (he had a driver!) adjusted the mirror, lifting his chin to look Theo up and down before maintaining eye contact as he slowly licked the points of his teeth.  
“Good”  
Boris continued to talk in Ukrainian, quickly and well out of Theo’s grasp. The man seemed to not speak English but regarded Theo as something of a minor threat nonetheless. Making it clear, through tone alone, that he was offering to do many horrible things, and watching Theo hungrily through the mirror. Strange.  


-

Boris stood several feet back, obviously wrestling with the urge to attack. This was not the Boris that flung half-drunk fists aimlessly towards Theo’s ribs. This was a man, wiry and strong, that Theo would not want to fight. In the shadows by the shop, he looked just a bit like Oliver, the customer that had accosted him a while back, the same sharp lines and barely restrained hunger. Which was, of course, strange.  
Well, it’s not like Theo had forgotten all those nights as boys either. It was better not to dwell on it, he opened the door.  
“Theo is that you” called Hobie from the other room.  
“Yes. yes, uh Hobie do you remember-” he paused “oh hello, Mrs. DeFrees.”  
“Popchyk!” there was a nervousness in his voice. And there the dog was, teeth bared and shaking at Hobie’s feet as if defending his home from a stranger. From a predator.  
“Popchyk, do not worry, is only me.” at Boris’s voice the dog relaxed, before crossing this distance quickly. The boy and dog embraced on the ground, a movement that would have passed without comment in vegas but here very obviously put Mrs. Defrees on edge.  
“And is this would be?”  
“Right, right, Hobie, Mrs. DeFrees, meet my friend Boris. Boris Pavlikovsky.”  
At the word friend, Hobie raised an eyebrow.  


-

Gyuri had been kinder to him once the reentered the car, understanding suddenly that Theo was Boris’s friend, the “blood of his heart”, a strange but welcome phrase. They had driven for a bit, left popchyk with Gyuri who promised the dog a bacon egg and cheese, and left them at a club where Boris had some sort of connection.  
The man at the door had made it clear that they were invited in. strange, but Theo was already drunk, his attention slipping, white lines made their way to his face without him noticing and now Boris was yelling.  
“I said” the back room was loud, a near constant thrum of music and chatter “I’m a vampire.”  
Theo, having finally heard, laughed.  
“No you’re not, you’re barely even goth anymore.” the line between thinking the words and speaking them was nonexistent.  
“Potter, I would not lie to you. I am a vampire, honest. Kotku turned me after you left. To save me, it was a good thing, do not blame her. But, I am a vampire. I have to avoid direct sunlight, a creature of the night, drink people’s blood to survive.”  
“You’re saying Kotku is a vampire too? What, am I a vampire now as well?” he was yelling, no one seemed to notice. Boris was laughing. Vampire. It would explain some things, the teeth, the unchanged face. Theo had noticed earlier that Boris had in fact not grown taller since vegas, and was simply wearing heeled boots. Heeled boots. Vampires. Fucking heeled boots.  
“You don’t believe me? Everyone in this room is a bloodsucker except you potter.” he glanced around the room quickly as if fact checking his statement, “ah well, almost everyone.” he nodded towards some half-naked women, tired and pale, confused and barely moving.  
“Prove it” this he said with a confidence he had not had all night, Boris was fucking with him. Boris was a strange man, there was no explanation needed, this was who he was. Bizarre. What had seemed suspicious all night made perfect sense in the light of the club.  
Boris rolled his eyes, sighed, and shrugged before grabbing Theo’s wrist.  
Despite his demand, only seconds before Theo, drunker than he had been in years, startled as Boris raised the soft veins that trailed off before the palm to his mouth and,  
“This won’t hurt”  
He bit down.  


-

It didn’t hurt.  
The world was a spinning thing. This Theo had always known, they taught it in school. But he knew it now more than he had in many years. There was a rushing in his ears, like the ocean, which made sense because he could see dark waves ebb and flow around the edges of his vision. He was so warm, he was so tired. Everything made sense but also nothing made sense. He couldn’t see. What had he been trying to see?  
Boris.  
Boris sat above him, strange. Theo’s head was settled in his lap. That wasn’t right, or maybe it was? His head hurt, just a little, or maybe it just throbbed to the sounds around him. It was so loud.  
“Do not worry, potter, you’ll be alright.” Boris sounded so sure. Had he been speaking aloud?  
His head hurt, but the rest of him was fine. A softness he did not deserve had swallowed the last of a curving guilt in his chest that he had ignored for years.  
Vampires. Huh.  


-

Theo wakes up, head still against Boris’s lap, in the car. He takes a second to count. Gyuri is there. Popper is there. Theo is there. Boris is there. Good.  
Then he wakes up again, more this time, and is upright before he can embarrass himself further. To think he had worried Boris had gotten the wrong idea from their time in Vegas while he was still here, an adult, acting like this.  
“Sorry” short words were easy.  
“It is okay” Boris’s eyes were kind.  
“Sorry” he repeated, he could not think of any other words.  
“I would like to thank you,” Boris paused, “for many things, for being good about this, but also-”  
He tried to say something but couldn’t find the words.  
“I am really sorry for what I did to you.” Boris had done something to him, what it was he couldn’t remember. In the club, there had been a moment. His hand against Boris’s mouth. Reminiscent of the time as children where Boris had lifted Theo’s bleeding fist to his face and kissed it.  
“The thing at the club?” Theo’s voice was shaking “its okay, I don’t mind.” Shit. Fuck. that was too much.  
But Boris just smiled, slow and sad and small.  
“No not the thing at the club. I would like to help you, give back what I can. It is hard. Hard not to get caught. Harder to put things right. I have done bad things. But I will get it back for you. I am trying.”  
“What?”  
Boris was still talking but the rushing in his ears was back and this time it was not soft and warm at all.  
“Figured you heard about Miami, knew you must be worried. I came by your shop because I wanted to make sure you knew. It cannot be traced back to you, I made sure. No way to wrap you up in it. It is my fault. Knew it was bad, the setup. Should have trusted my instincts.” he tapped his nose “have very good instincts. It is bad to trust friends of friend. Your friends sure? But further away it is risky. People were hurt. Your bird? Gone. but I will get it back. I will. I am thinking of a way.”  
This was too much. This was wrong. Not like the earlier wrongness that slowed his words and held down his head, soft and kind an insistent. This wrongness was sharp.  
“What?” short words were easy.  
“I wanted to make sure you heard from me. Knew it was okay. Not trouble for you. And, of course, I’ve made a fortune off it. Wanted to give it back to you, to own. You love it.” he tapped his own heart and then reached to touch Theo’s.  
“No” and then again “no” and then slowly “how could you have known”  
Boris reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a phone, flipping through pictures before handing it over.  
The verso. Distinctive like a fingerprint.  
“How?”  
“You showed me”  


-

He had gotten to the storage locker eventually, sore from walking and stumbling from the substance and strangely light-headed. There had been, under paper and plastic and pillowcase, a civics textbook.  
And then, home again, stumbling and out of it. Still drunk though sobered greatly by the shock. He slept for three hours before waking. He showered. He shaved. He forced himself to eat, and then open the store. It was noon by the time Hobie showed his face again.  
“So” he placed his hands on the counter “Boris?” he raised that eyebrow again and laughed,  
“Yes. Boris.” he tried not to think of the night before. Not in front of Hobie. Not the club. Not the drugs. Not the spinning room. Not the kiss against the wrist. Not waking up in his lap. And definitely not The Goldfinch.  
“You two made quite a night of it,” Hobie smiled in that way that said he knew more than he let on, but of course, he couldn’t. Not yet. “And he looked quite young, you said he was what? A year older than you? I find that hard to believe. But I guess some people just have those faces.”  
He had looked young. That had bothered him before. But it barely mattered now.  
“Popper liked him, a little afraid at first but then,” he smiled more “I’ve never seen an animal so happy.”  
Fuck. Popper. Where was he?  
“Oh and Kitsey called, you have dinner.”  


-

“Theo!” it was strange, to hear his own name. His real name. From that voice. He turned.  
Boris was standing in the doorway, dog under his arm. Myriam behind him.  
“He did not miss you one bit.” Boris continued, dropping the dog to the floor softly. Popchyk, as if defending Boris’s point stayed by his feet. At this Myriam rolled her eyes and mouthed something that might have been “homos”  
Theo stared blankly at the three of them. Relieved that he did not have to track down popper but unable to speak.  
“I am going to make it right again. And good. I will” at this Myriam restrained a laugh.  
More silence.  
“He doesn’t pee on all this fancy furniture?” Boris was looking around as if a more open, talkative, Theo may be hiding behind a fraudulent set of drawers.  
“He doesn’t”  
“Ah well, you are not mad? Not about the bird, I know you are mad about that but,” he glanced back to Myriam. “The other thing?”  
The turned his head, finally surprised and a bit confused.  
“What other thing?”  
Myriam laughed, no restraint this time, “blackout drunk, you said?” she whispered to no one.  
Boris just nodded.  
“I will see you later.”  
And they were gone.  
“What other thing?” Theo echoed to an empty room, popper staring up at him. He didn’t have time for this. He had dinner with Kitsey and the Longstreets soon. Fuck.  


-

This time he heard the bell ring before he heard the voices. But it had been nearly a week so he did not expect the booming voice yelling  
“Potter!” an excited Boris and a vaguely exhausted Myriam followed them in.  
“Potter! I am going uptown. To talk to a man. Not someone I know very well. He is an old friend of Myriam. May know where your bird is. Probably in Europe!”  
Theo and Myriam in unison looked over the shop to make sure they were alone.  
“Okay,” Theo said and stepped out from behind the register “give me a minute”  
“What?” Boris stepped back “No! No, you can’t come. Dangerous. Stay here. I wanted to tell you, make sure you knew that we are working on it. Horst is. He is. You cannot meet him.”  
Myriam rolled her eyes, a habit of hers, and patted Boris on the shoulder.  
“I’m gonna go call Astrid, you handle this.” Theo bristled at how she spoke as if he wasn’t there.  
“Astrid? His wife?”  
She just laughed, pulling out her phone. It seemed intentional how the phrase “hey babe, I’ve missed you.” made its way through the closing door as she stepped outside.  
He turned to Boris “what-” before abandoning that line of questioning “why can’t I come.”  
Theo cringed at his own voice, childlike and impudent.  
“Because he, horst, is like us.” he gestured to himself and then Myriam. “It would not be safe, and the danger is not necessary.”  
“Like you how? He’s a gangster? I don’t care.” this was stupid too, already he was nervous about how he would handle it if Boris agreed to let him come.  
“Look, it does not matter, you cannot come. We will meet you later, pick you up, debrief.”  
There was a long pause.  
“Okay?”  
“Fine, okay.”  
Boris looked at him, strange, almost hungry. And closed the door. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look at me, posting at a normal time. crazy.  
> this really is looking like a rewrite. oh well.  
> anyway, I was rereading their reunion scene while writing this and the phrase is "new snaps" not "new teeth". I'm a disappointment.  
> some dialogue is taken directly from the book because I'm lazy.


	4. Head Not Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theo is annoying. Almost everyone else is wonderfully competent.

The boy was a mess, she thought without specifying which.  
How had this happened? Myriam was lying on her queen bed, hotel robe on, eyeliner washed off, ready to watch bad reality TV, and maybe seduce the room service guy into being her dinner. Instead, Boris had shown up with his boyfriend and insisted on occupying their communal space.  
“It’s fine really. The right thing to do. Get married. Head not heart. Makes everyone happy” Theo wasn’t crying. Was probably very proud of himself for not crying. He was collapsed in the little armchair, next to the desk with all the stationary and her extra gun. He looked a bit like a painting. The furniture dealer: an image of the artists’ repression. He’d probably cry if he saw himself in oil paint. Or not cry, and feel very proud about it, and miss the whole point of the piece entirely.   
“You do not love her too much, that is good. The ones you love too much, they are no good.” he had essentially said this already. Boris was drunk. Vampires shouldn’t be able to get drunk. They didn’t have a human circulatory system, it didn’t make sense. Boris specifically shouldn’t be drunk, but because he had told her he was going to be sober “the whole time in New York” and because she had been with him all day and hadn’t seen him drink. Still, Boris was drunk and spread out on his queen size bed.   
“Lets both be good, and truthful, and kind to each other, and let’s be happy together and have fun always” he snorted “that’s what she said to me. That’s what she said.”   
In all honesty, Kitsey sounded like fun. She had her shit together, she knew what she wanted, she was by all accounts rich and sexy and not too involved. For not the first time Myriam looked at Boris’s face, decayed by love and loyalty and absolute misery, and then at Theo who wore his denial of all relevant emotional points with pride and thought, really? Him?  
“She is a bitch. It is ok. We will get you your bird and you will marry the stupid girl and life will be ok and good and we all be happy and” Boris’s phone went off “ah one second, this is important.” and then he stood, with remarkable control of his faculties, and locked himself in the bathroom and Myriam alone with the abstract concept of being closeted shoved into a human form.   
Two minutes and 46 seconds went by in blissful silence, she checked.   
“So, you and Astrid?” ah, how to explain that without upsetting Theodore’s delicate understanding of the world. Well, she was nothing if not up for a challenge.   
“Uh yeah, Boris knocked her up while doing some work in Stockholm because he’s an idiot, and then she wanted to keep the kid and Boris made a big thing about it, wanting to leave her with a large sum of money and agree not to talk about it. He was scared of being a father, it makes sense. But she wanted the kid to have a family, and frankly, Boris was being a dick. Then her dad made him marry her. He’s a fucking nazi but he had a point. I was already working with Boris at the time so I came to the wedding and I met the bride and well, y’know, Boris is” gay, a homosexual, a bloodsucker, and a cocksucker, and head over heels for your pretentious waspy ass, “not really the marriage type he didn’t mind it when Astrid and I hit it off and made some arrangements. It was always going to be a wedding for show, to make outside parties happy, so it didn’t really matter. I’m there all the time. The kids call me mommy. Her dad thinks I’m a bodyguard or a tutor or something. Astrid may be Boris’s legal spouse and baby mama, but she’s my wife” There. Story told. All topics of vampirism and male homosexuality were narrowly avoided.   
Theo stared blankly, undoubtedly reeling at the idea of a lavender marriage despite the fact that he was very obviously marrying his beard. Head not heart, asshole, it's not hard to understand. They let the next five minutes pass in silence.

-

“Borya, darling, how is your potter?” horst spoke softly, even on the phone, forcing Boris to strain to hear him.   
“He’s fine, worked up about a girl.” there was no bitterness in his voice.   
“Is he, ah, in the know” Horst was old, very very old, and felt the need to speak in code as if the most scandalous things they spoke about over the phone was the vamp thing.   
“No, I’ve tried to tell him. The information doesn’t stick.”   
“Hmm, and you told him about Lucius? Reeve?”   
“Yes. he already has a problem with him, won't tell me what.”   
“Stubborn, and pretty right? And an art collector? Remind me again why I cannot see him? I think we would get along”   
“You would drain him dry and he would be half-alive writhing on your floor for the rest of his life, Horst”   
“Of course, of course, and you are saving him for yourself?” Horst was a good man, helped people through the transformation, helped Boris many times, was helping now. He could kill him.   
“Why did you call?”   
“Ah! I have news about Sascha and the painting. Irelands a no go”

-

Myriam was an orderly woman. She did things right. Kotku and Boris liked to hunt together. They were young, insecure. They’d figure out, as she had, that it was better on your own.   
She fed once every week, without a slip-up or delay. Her favorite part of being a creature of the night was the instincts. She remembered being told that she should have instincts as a young woman, ones she could never grasp. Now, sure, she was fine with kids. But she had never felt what her peers assured her they all felt. But this, these instincts she was sure of. Her body told her clearly what it wanted, and it provided her with the tools she needed to get it in an efficient way. It was why she went to New York, and not kotku. It was why she waited patiently for Boris to talk theo home before she went downstairs to the hotel bar and chose someone.   
For Kotku, this was an act of reclamation, she was in charge of her own body. She was strong, she was fast, maybe one day she would figure out how to fly. When men touched her she broke their arms and played with their minds.   
For Boris, it was a source of guilt. Guilt half overcame but still guilt. He was a bit of a catholic about it. always making sure to do good deeds after the fact, apologizing profusely, pretending that he didn’t feel hungry because the want was just as bad as the action. He loved the movies where the vampires had a clear code of moral conduct, like twilight. He wasn’t like that but he liked to pretend.   
But for Myriam, it was just eating. It was like sleeping or shitting. It was a thing she did. Arguably it was a thing she was good at. 6 minutes flat and she had convinced the brunette to come with her up to her room. The uncomfortable bit was the sexual undertones. But it wasn’t like Astrid was unaware. And she liked it when she had a consenting partner, no one said yes to this unless they got something out of it. It bothered her a little that she was never sure is they believed her until she was two teeth deep into their neck, but she tried her best. Whatever. Maybe she could convince the woman to try it in the shower. The clean up was always so inefficient.

-

Dealing with Theo was a bit like running a marathon. It was rewarding, it was something that Pippa wished she did more often, but it was exhausting, it took build up, and she really wasn’t in the position to do this type of thing that often. Maybe that was the real reason she couldn’t move back to New York. Not PTSD, just a twink who couldn’t handle his emotions, ruining an entire city.   
“You’re the perfect size” he was giving her that look again.   
And that was the problem with Theo. He was the only person alive who could understand her fully, who had lived and lost the way she had. But he was a man, convinced he was in love with her and without the self-control or awareness to keep it in check. She would tell him about Everett being fetishy about her bisexuality and he would jump at the reason to hate him and ignore the view into her life. She would tell him about the girl she knew, kidnapped and kept underground, about her life filled with panic attacks and an all-consuming jealousy towards anyone who could still hold music in their hands and shape it. She would tell him about grey dark London and beta-blockers and her vegetarian boyfriend (Theo was the only person less excited by Everett than she was, but Theo didn’t get that that was the point). And he would look at her, regardless of what she said like she was his already dead mom and his first child and his dream girl. He would look at her when she told him that she blamed herself for Welty’s death like she was his left ventricle and his last Xanax and his ancestral home.   
“And Welty, you know, he was an Advanced Being.” capital A capital B, you could hear it when he spoke, “like a Guru who can transfer all his wisdom and knowledge, his entire soul through touch.” and that was the other problem with Theo, he was fucking crazy. Coke was one thing, but if he thought he was the second coming of her adoptive father’s eternal spirit then she was never leaving London.

-

Theo was without a doubt too high to be dealing with Havistock Irving. He could get through so much with so little of himself present, a real gift. He and Mrs. Barbour would often, unbeknownst to her, spend hours slowly exchanging words while weighed down by pain killers neither one of them moving an inch the entire time. This was not that sort of conversation. There where men (and sometimes women) of all walks of life who made the whole ordeal of living quite uncomfortable. They would look at you as if they were keenly aware of the amount of blood in your body. As if they knew something you didn’t. As if their set of goals were simply outside of your reach. Boris was one, but Boris was not the type of threat where Theo had to keep his wits about him.   
The way Irving was staring and Mrs. Barbour’s neck as he spoke “we all know, don’t we, that ‘museum quality’ really depends on the sort of museum you’re talking about.” made it clear that he was a threat.   
And then the conversation escaped him. Kitsey appeared, thanked him with her eyes, the casual throwing around of threats stopped. Mrs. Barbour seemed to share his opinions on Havistock though for different reasons (“some of us have found it interesting how many of the connections he invokes are dead”) then an awkward and unnecessary talk with Platt about women. Then Hobie “Welty and I knew him as Sloane Griscam. But his real name- something else entirely” and then “he’s absolutely in no position to cause trouble or make demands, is he?”, From then on he was passed around quickly, with little say in the matter nor responsibility to do much other than nod and stay upright. “Oh have you met Mr. Abernathy”? tiny pupils, a once over, a knowing smirk, another flute of champagne. Another introduction and then another.   
He glanced around the room for the true red of Pippa’s hair and found it. There she was, the only interesting thing in the room. She leaned against the wall and spoke to Boris, cigarette in one hand and a silly umbrella in the other.

-

“So how do you know the bride?” this was an easy question if they knew Theo she had already met them. He had maybe four friends.   
“I know the groom”   
Huh. so the pale man with the umbrella and a scowl was Theo’s friend. It made more sense than imagining he belonged to an incredibly elite goth country club.   
“Oh me too, I’m Pippa.”   
“Ah Pippa, he has told me about you. The girl from the museum, yes?” he was smiling now, she wished she hadn’t seen his teeth.   
“Are you Boris?” this was less of a shot in the dark than it should have been. The only name without a face left in Theo’s story after he had awkwardly shown her his mother’s old headshots.   
“The one and only, he looks miserable out there.”   
“That’s just his face. He’s always miserable.” and then, feeling that she might be in the presence of another soul fated to put up with Mr. Decker’s bullshit “has he told you his Theory about Gurus?”   
Boris laughed an open mouth laugh and leaned against her. His skin was cold and she saw his teeth flash sharp in the light. He reminded her suddenly of both a wolf and the old statutes in London and also a girlfriend she had had years ago, a girl in the hospital who never grew past the age of 12 and who knew so much about music. Things were either going very well or very very badly for Theo.   
“Blood of my heart, that man, you know that little dog is named after the, ah, drug gay men do before sex. I don’t think he has put it together now.” and he smiled even more.   
“He probably knows, you just have to get him drunk enough to admit gay people exist before he can get to it.” Boris swung his arm around her shoulder at that, so she continued “you know he likes to use Russian proverbs in English, no one knows what he’s talking about. He pretends he picked them up from being so cultured but he has a book in his room that he studies. I’ve seen it.”   
“He does that for me! Tried to teach himself Russian in college, still can’t speak it. Very funny. Why would he learn Russian in school? Just go to Russia and then take classes in lying to rich people, better use. Transferable skill set.”  
“He’s ridiculous. He makes a big show of ordering meat every time we go out to eat as if looking a vegetable will be what pushes him over the line into homo territory. I mean, I’m a vegetarian, I don’t know what he thinks I’m going to assume.”   
“Ah, I am” a pause “not a vegetarian” he looked at the ground.  
“I gathered that.” the silence was heavy and prolonged.   
“Back when we were kids he used to pretend to hate MCR because they were” he waved his hand instead of saying it, he and Theo must get along well “but he loved them. I could tell.”   
Now it was her turn to grin and lean closer.

-

Theo was handling things well. She was proud of him. Really. She would have told him about tom after the wedding. Or well, maybe she would have never told him. But if she had decided to keep things going the way she liked them she would have told him after the wedding, and then he could have gone and been self-destructive about it in secret and no one would know and they could handle things as a unit.   
Instead, they had addressed it, against her will, only a few days before the party. Still, Theo was holding up, only obviously high if you knew him, and wonderfully polite. This was going to work out.   
He was walking towards her now, away from the short dirty pale man struggling to light a cigarette covertly in the doorway.  
“I’m going” well it had been too much to hope for.   
“Theo, darling, there’s a reservation”   
“Make an excuse for me, your mother won’t be there. It won’t matter. You can pick the china and all that while I’m gone. I don’t care. I’ll be a couple of days.”   
And this was their arrangement, she stays in love for as long as possible, he does his secret things in secret. The world is happy.   
“Kiss me” and he does, and then the photos are taken care of, which is a relief.   
“Tell them I’m away at an estate.” and he smiles at her, more in love than he’s ever been. This really is so easy. What a team of liars they are.   
He’s gone now, who would’ve guessed Theo Decker could make things so simple.

-

“I don’t understand,” he said quietly to no one in particular. It wasn’t even true. He understood everything. And yet in his hand, it read: NEWARK LIBERTY INTL (EWR) TO AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS (AMS) and at home, his note telling Pippa he loved her sat by the door and he was alone on a plane. Only a few hours ago he was being accosted by a man with a string of fake names and a grudge against Hobie. The man in the car to the airport had smiled and his teeth were so sharp and Theo had almost asked him why but this man who was not Gyuri spoke no English (for real this time) and so he could not. It seemed like cheating to ask Boris. And Boris had spoken to Pippa, had flirted with her. Boris has shown up at his engagement party and pulled him away to Europe. Myriam had managed to get him a ticket across the world near winter break in a matter of hours. Myriam was somehow involved with Boris’s wife. He knew Boris again. After so long, he knew him again. It was such a large set of impossibilities. He just didn’t understand.   
But also he did understand. He was going to get his painting back. His life had always had one clear goal. It was calming then, it was calming now. He was going to get his painting back, the rest was just background noise. It simply did not matter if he understood.

-

Kotku knew, both from personal experience and from Myriam’s texts to the group chat, that no affection she carried for Boris would carry over to his boy toy. This was confirmed the minute she saw him, stumbling out of the terminal dazed and confused and so fucking annoying. God, she hated him. What a bitch.   
He has stared at her blankly when he had first seen her. He had very obviously not been told she was going to be picking him up. Maybe he hadn’t even known where he was going to go after he landed. He wasn’t exactly the type of person who knew what was going on. She smiled at him, the wide sharp smile she gave to men in ally ways when she wanted them to be afraid of her. He just blinked. He never did have much of a survival instinct. She grabbed his bag from him, mainly to show how much better she was at carrying it and she turned and headed off. He knew to follow. If he didn’t even know that then the painting would probably end up half burnt in a pool of fish oil by the end of the week and it wouldn’t matter if she left him.   
Once she and Myriam had cut a man’s fingers off. They were both strong enough to rip them off clean but instead, Myriam had held down his wrists and she had worked the saw. It was to make a point, it was necessary work, she understood that. They let the man keep some of his fingers. This had been early on in the business, now they had people to do that sort of thing for them. But still, she would do worse, more grueling, and abhorrent things for Boris. She loved him and she could endure a lot. She was proving that now, as she drove Theo to his hotel room. What a bitch.   
He had rolled his eyes at her hoodie at the airport. Judgey little fuck. She wouldn’t still be wearing hoodies like this if she didn’t burn in the sun, but if he couldn’t put that one together on his own than he didn’t deserve to know. She was going to have them sit in silence the whole way there, let him stew in the awkwardness of getting a ride from his high school pseudo-cuckold. But the way he looked at her fucking pullover, the contempt and shame in his eyes. She hated him.   
“You ah- look the same,” he said, interrupting her inner monologue, fucking bitch.   
Obviously, she looked the same. She had switched to higher heels, changed the way she did her makeup, cut her hair. Little tweaks to show the passage of time. But it didn’t work. She looked the same. So did he though. Nothing supernatural about that. He had been a stunted kid who wore button-ups in the dessert for no reason, had reached a state of perma-high, and looked at her like she was a three-legged kitten who he, for some reason, hated with a vitriolic passion. Now he was taller.   
“Yeah, I do”   
And then while he gawked at her she moved to turn on the music. She watched carefully as You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison made Theo flinch, there were ironies in this world that were so sweet. Was that dramatic irony? The audience knowing something the character didn’t? Probably. She hit the gas.   
It was just her and Gerard for a blessed few minutes but Theo, what a fucking bitch, came through to ruin it again. First, he turned the volume down, it had been almost too loud to think, but she wasn’t going to let him know she felt that way. She scowled. Oh, the things she did for Boris.  
“Uh”  
She did not respond.   
“Thank you, for driving me.”   
Huh. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you tell i'm just shoving as many different povs in here as possible? can you tell I'm in love with ever single female Tartt character ever written? can you tell I'm nocturnal & refuse to proofread? 
> 
> anyway, sorry for the distinct lock of borea in this. ill get there, eventually.


End file.
